the trick is to keep breathing

"This is my I-don't-care face."
"...that's your normal face."

Today's chore log:
- two rounds of dishes
- cleaned kitchen
- emptied fridge
- washed spots on floor and walls
- spot steam-cleaned carpet
- rearranged living rm on trial basis
- sorted mail & bills
- arranged my prescription refills
- two loads of laundry
- sorted random clothes
- one round of closet purge
- litter boxes
- wrote 1200 words

Helper evidence here.

No, I have no idea where it came from either. May it stick around all week.

You may have noticed I seem to have vanished off of the map. This is because my new job is absolutely batshit fucking crazy. I think I've only posted like three times in all of July?, and I send far fewer text- and email- based daily communications than I used to (it's funny how long my phone battery lasts when I am not using it!), and this is because my new job is absolutely batshit fucking crazy.

There are days my employees catch me before I have even entered the building; I swear to god they're timing their smoke breaks since they know I pull in at 7:55am every morning, because they flag me down walking from my car to the door with whatever the day's update is. There are days I don't log into my own computer until 10; there are days I don't start my own actual work day until 4-5pm when everything else has calmed down. There have been evenings I am there until 6, 6:30 pm; there are nights I bring work home (tonight being one of them). There have been absolutely zero days where I leave at 4:45pm like I am supposed to. I use my mobile so much for work the company has started subsidizing it.

Did I mention things are absolutely batshit fucking crazy?

I have no time for anything anymore. I'm basically now working the same 10-hr days I was working beforehand, with added bonus 8+ days on Fridays. Becky is joking that I didn't actually get a raise, I'm now just being paid for epic overtime; it's actually truer than it should be.

It's a common joke among the management team (who I think I shall nickname after summons, because it pleases me to think of us all as a team of eidolons), because on those days where shit has been flying off the fan at intense and disastrous rates and we don't sit down at our own desks actually alone until 4:30pm it's actually nice to stay until 6:00pm because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow but it's quiet now and we can focus. Ditto on Fridays; Fridays have become a blessing, the one day a week I know I will be minimally interrupted and can make a reasonable attempt to churn through all of the work I meant to do during the week and was pulled away from: 40 hours in one 8hr day, that's doable, right. Siren (the manager focused more on products and projects) and I mourn the loss of our ability to tell everyone to fuck off (Siren is also new to her position) and complain about the intense upkeep we need to do to stay targeted on our underperformers; Golem (the manager focused more on mechanical aspects) and I are already planning late-night office pizza parties as we are forced into a software update we weren't consulted on and weren't a part of but are still expected to launch into our maintenance program by some ridiculously unwieldy date like September. I am lucky to be surrounded by amazing people who understand and desperately want me to succeed (although in Golem's case I think that is mainly so that he can stop working on Saturdays); I adore them immensely, even as we all joke about using and abusing each other. (I, as Operations, am the cross-sectional point where Siren's research & development & troubleshooting projects intersect with Golem's preventative maintenance & plant improvement work; this makes my life difficult but also means that they both have to be nice to me, ha.)

I am overwhelmingly, bizzarely, incomprehensibly in love with this job.

This is what I was made for. I have already, after a month-and-change: dealt with a problem underperforming employee in a way that promises to either make progress or GTFO after basically 20 years of experience and 5+ years of not seeming able to do the job; sent nastygram after nastygram until the two worst communicators in the plant specifically come to me to let me know what they are doing before anyone else even knows; solved scheduling mishaps; yelled at the EPA; called our safety director's work stupid and dumb in the same meeting (although that was inadvertant and accidental), to her face (which I realize is tactless; here's the fucks I give, because incompetence is the match that lights this stubborn Taurean fire); defended my own employees against attacks and slander and bullshit they shouldn't have to put up with from other people and been specifically thanked for doing so; learnt how to buy things within our online file management system and promptly spent $300 on hard hats to play with; improved the attitude of a supervisor who has been a negative vendetta-hound for 8+ years; redone the old lab where I used to sit into what will be usable office cubicles (although I can't take full credit for that one); made my boss say the phrase "you are right, he/she/that is fucking clueless" half a dozen times; made my boss either grin maniacally or put his head down when I walk into his office; made my boss regret his decision to hire me probably four hundred times; made people actually run from me; made changes, made improvements, made an impact. I've revamped systems and redone OPSs and made demands of our alarm management system that no one has made until now. I've let out my inner asshole, my inner control freak, my inner perfectionist: they're all running around rampant making decisions and giving orders and frightening bystanders everywhere. I'm not sorry; I was not hired into this position to be good and play along.

I am absolutely loving it which is good because right now this is my only life, my highest priority, the shit I eat and breathe.

It will not last forever. I will not last forever in this: canceling PT because I have to stay until 6 because there's work due tomorrow, not scheduling doctor appointments because I don't have the time, not working on my thesis because fuck more work; this level of intensity will eventually fade as all of the plant becomes used to this position's existence and my presence. I will burn out, the initial activation energy will be met, the workload will become manageable even if I have to light half of it on fire. It's not forever.

But right now all things Sev are absolutely batshit fucking crazy, so please forgive me if I take a while to reply to an email or respond to a comment or do anything I have told you I would do because I am running on fumes and adrenaline and caffeine and stubbornness at the mo.



HOW ARE YOU ALL

It's that weird overlap time where you are moving and you know you are moving, but you haven't yet; the place you're in now becomes less home by default, just a feeling, but there's nothing yet to take its place. For a Taurus like me - grounded by the places I feel safe - this is a very strange and uncomfortable feeling.

I'm working on making the place feel like my home in my head though, so that once I get there, I will feel settled. Took the cats and had a sleepover party on Friday (Marzy had an absolute blast; Porter was pretty terrified and spent the first ~15min hiding under the laundry tub, but eventually warmed up to it. Rydia, showing once again that she truly is my familiar, somehow felt out which room was the master bedroom and spent most of her time lounging under my window); spent all yesterday afternoon putting up a first coat of paint in Becky's room. Going to spend time this week taking vacation from work to paint the other bedrooms, tear up the master BD carpet, fix a leaky sink etc.

I'm calling it the Feymarch. Although it also goes by Castle Gaylord (which is actually a more fitting name when you realize what an absolute dork I am for interior decorating. My dining room is going to be straight out of fucking Rivendell, you may all defriend me immediately.), but the Feymarch is fitting for a place that feels like it's out in the middle of nowhere.

Hard to believe I'm going to be living there in less than a month. When in the absolute fuck am I going to pack?

My moods are still, honestly, all over the goddamn place. I'm excited about it, but then I reach a point where I'm preemptively overwhelmed and just don't want to think about it - and then I start bouncing off all the other angles: I want credit for doing something this awesome all by myself; I don't want anybody else knowing or talking or helping because this is mine; I want to have a million parties; I want to be there alone forever. I swear my depression-brain is a manic depressive these days. I could deal with it when it was straightforward depression brain. I seriously don't know how to operate with manic depressive headbees.

But it's mine. If you're an address person and you'd like my new address, fire me an email -- I'd love to get some cute moving-in mail. :D

good lord: I'm not sure I've ever found anything that breaks my mind down more than this: http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html it's so true >.>

http://www.mypersonality.info/ if you want to know what you are

Back from Pittsburgh. Jim and Mary's house is awesome! I am jealous of their yard. More on that later.

Football tonight: the Browns are terrible. But Buffalo is 3-0!

In other news: might shoot people. One of the Problems with Tauruses is that we are so slow to anger that many people forget we have a temper at all. I try really hard to be really nice. When that fails... well. It is not pretty.

Anyway. Off to practice for Snafubar tomorrow night! I have to learn two songs in like... AN HOUR!